


The Mansions of Los Feliz

by sinverguenza



Category: Push (2009)
Genre: F/M, Het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 21:36:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinverguenza/pseuds/sinverguenza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick and Cassie have a bit of trouble communicating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mansions of Los Feliz

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chell-surname-redacted (failsafe)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/gifts).



1) It starts in Prague, of all places. The place where Cassie feels safe, relatively. She likes the city, likes the way that everything is jumbled together like a Rubik’s cube mess of Art Nouveau and baroque, gothic, modern. In a weird way, it reminds her of Hong Kong like that. So many small cobbled alleys, dark nooks where she hides and pulls her notebook close. The visions in Prague are slow, so Cassie and Nick put money down on a small pre-war apartment. There is no view of the river, which makes her feel safe. It’s nothing much and the rent is month-to-month. They’re the deepest roots she’s had in years.

  
The tea is terrible, so she learns to drink _kava_.

  
“That stuff is sludge,” says Nick. “Don’t know how you stand the crunch at the bottom.”

  
“You don’t drink the whole cup,” she replies patiently. Really, sometimes Nick is an idiot and she can’t believe he’s lived a decade longer than her and still doesn’t know how to reboot his own computer.

  
Nick just smiles, though. That indulgent smile. He hardly ever gets mad at her, even though she knows she can be utterly maddening. Instead, he looks at the people walking pat them, as they sit in front of the café. He’s so relaxed here, he’s back to being the young man that he is.

  
A dark-haired girl brushes past Cassie, doesn’t even see her. Cassie is used to this. The girl has red lips and her eyes are rimmed in black, a large bruise across the line of her jaw. She speaks with a heavy accent.

  
“You interested? Yes?” She shoves a glossy piece of cardstock at Nick.

  
Nick looks at the paper in that polite way of his, a ‘No thanks,’ already on his lips. There’s a half-naked girl on the paper, an address.

  
He turns the paper over, and the other side is covered completely with a large, glossy, printed flower.

  
Nick doesn’t say anything, just keeps looking at it slowly, turning it over in his fingers.

  
“What’s your name,” says Cassie, and the words come out sharply.

  
“Ruza,” says the girl. Her eyes look dead. “You come too, yes?”

  
Her name isn’t really Ruza, it’s just the first of many lies, but Cassie doesn’t find all of that out until later, until they destroy the trafficking ring, discover the rooms of drugged girls, and Nick cries facedown in his bed, thinking about the ringleader and the blood pouring from his mouth. Another death by his hand. She’s no good at comfort, so she settles for taking a long shower that outlasts his grief.

  
Cassie, in that moment at the café, just calls their landlord. Her Czech is pretty shit, but she manages to cancel their appointment to sign the lease later that afternoon without much trouble.

  
2) L.A. is home to her, or like home at least. She lived there for years and knows her way around the freeways by sight. Her and Nick argue every time they drive somewhere.

  
“I’m telling you to use the 405!” She’s long past patient at this point.

  
“Look, I mapped this. Your way is slower.” Nick drives confidently past the onramp.

  
“You don’t know L.A!”

  
“Well, you don’t know everything!” Nick tries to pass this off jokingly but she can feel the frustration underneath it all.

  
So she leans back onto the leather of the car that came from God-knows-where, and she lets Nick drive. Fine. Her visions are mostly about stuff happening on a beach, and it’s stuff she dreads. The usual stuff.

  
Today they’re headed inland, so she relaxes about the death part at least. Her and Nick are fighting more and more often, it’s really aggravating. Last night he told her that it was just her age. She wanted to hit him in the face and probably would have, if he wasn’t getting so _damn_ good with the pushing. He would have seen it coming a million miles away.

  
Los Feliz is terribly familiar, hot asphalt and thirsty grass. They pull into a weird vegan restaurant, the sort of place that gives Nick hives. Their contact turns out to be a girl named Heather, a blonde, her face so similar to Nick’s that Cassie does a double take at first.

  
“Hey, so great to meet you guys,” she says, and she places her hand in Nick’s. Nick brings out the envelope containing a wad of cash, which Heather takes with a swift little twist of the wrist. They’re still holding hands. Cassie is tired of being ignored, so she pushes through them and sits at the table.

  
There’s a glass in front of her. “Boba for you, right?” Heather smiles at Cassie in a maternal manner. It makes Cassie want to burn the place down.

  
“I guess,” says Cassie. She loves boba tea, and takes a tentative sip. Raspberry. Her favorite. “I hope your tricks extend beyond ordering food.”

  
Heather is a watcher. A good one.

  
“Cassie…” says Nick.

  
“I promised that I’d be able to help you guys, and I will. I’ve seen it,” says Heather. “Now, for Nick. Something special that I know you’ll love.” She pushes a small white bowl toward him and pours hot water from a tiny teapot. In the bowl is a shriveled little bulb, it looks terrible and Cassie scrunches her nose.

  
As soon as the hot water hits it, though, the bulb flares and grows, yellow blooms bursting open, leaves uncurling.

  
Nick looks appalled, and Cassie closes her eyes. Every instinct inside of her wants to grab Nick and beg him to leave, to leave right now.

  
“Chrysanthemum,” says Heather. “It’s a flower. Flower tea. You’ll love it.”

  
Nick looks at it for a moment, sighs and sips. Cassie close her eyes, her lids flutter, and she sees Nick, long legs tangled in his, blonde hair brushing against his chest, his lips caught between his teeth.

  
“I’m going to the car,” says Cassie. Nick looks stunned when she grabs the keys and heads for the door.

  
Heather is with them for almost a year. Cassie can’t exactly hate her, but she manages to do something very, very close.

  
3) Things go back to normal after Heather leaves, and for awhile it’s just Nick and Cassie, the way that she likes it. Nick still treats her like a lesser being, doesn’t trust her with more information than he wants to give her. Still tries to protect her feelings, begs her to hold on to some part of her youth but as far as Cassie is concerned, it’s already gone and has been for years, since the first time she was dragged from her bed and forced to fight her way free, to make her way in a world full of people that grab at her, tearing and shaking.

  
There in another stupid hotel room, even though she’s pestered Nick to no end about it. She can find them a house, a nice empty house. She’s getting really good at it. She has Heather to thank for a lot of that, but Cassie would rather die than ever admit it to Nick. As far as Nick knows regarding her opinion, Heather was just another distraction from the goal. And Heather _did_ find her husband thanks to Nick and Cassie. Heather has her happy ending. How great for her.

  
Of course, she didn’t have time to find a house, here. Some bitch at the train station handed Nick an ugly thistle-looking thing and of course Nick tried to help her. Turns out she was a wiper.

Turns out there was a whole slew of Division creeps waiting for her, who were only too happy to get on their tail too. They found the girl’s parents and hopefully some anonymity for her for the moment, but Cassie doesn’t hope for peace anymore beyond a good sleep.

  
“Nick, you cannot keep lying to me.” Cassie says this as she shrugs out of a soaking wet sweater. They’re in some remote part of Scotland. It’s freezing. Cassie hates rain.

  
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t think they’d be on us that quick.” Nick is shivering too, but he’s trying to talk to her, giving her his full attention. Cassie throws her sweater onto the ground, hard. The droplets fly off of the wet wool and onto Nick’s face.

  
“I guess I deserve that, but it doesn’t play well against my, ‘You’re too young to handle this stuff,’ argument.”

  
‘Shut up,” says Cassie. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you knew Division was back on our trail?”

  
“I got a call from Heather. But she said we had more time.”

  
“Heather,” says Cassie, and then she sneers.

  
“She’s pregnant, by the way,” says Nick softly.

  
That floors her for a minute. “How far?” she manages to croak.

  
“Three months,” says Nick, and with that Cassie can breathe again. Good, so there’s no chance that…

  
“You sound bummed,” says Cassie.

  
“I’m not. Just…not sure if it’s for the best. It’s dangerous and Heather is one of the best—“

  
“Now I know you’re trying to piss me off,” says Cassie, rubbing her head vigorously with a towel, her wet t-shirt clinging to her. “And none of this has anything to do with why you won’t tell me when we’re in trouble.”

  
Nick seems to be searching for words. “I…just didn’t think you needed to know.”

  
“Did you think I needed to trust you?” Cassie spits these words out at him with anger, with all the frustration in her heart.

  
“I’m not trying to lie to you.” Nick sits down on the bed, and runs his fingers through his hair. “I don’t want to do that to you.”

  
“Yeah, well that’s pretty much what you’re doing,” says Cassie, as she swallows the small break in her voice.

  
“I want you to have more than this. More than the chase.”

  
Which is the most hilarious thing ever. Cassie lives her visions. There’s no real chase there. There’s danger, sure, but it’s the danger of a future under a bright sun and sky, just her, facing down her opponent, alone.

  
The twists and turns of the maze don’t scare her.

  
“I have more than the chase. I’ve told you this like, a million times.” Cassie takes a timid step toward him, his head still in his hands, the wetness of his hair and the way that it spikes in dark, jagged pieces. His lashes are on his cheeks, and they’re wet too. Cassie reaches her hand forward.

The next thing Nick hears is the squeak of the pipes as Cassie tries to wash away the cold.

  
4) In Huelva, there’s a flamenco dancer in a bar. Her hair is dark, her skin is pale. Her brows are two thin lines on her face. Nick is mesmerized. Cassie sits in a booth and draws, her frown deepening the further she gets.

  
At the end of the performance, the dancer pulls the red carnation from her hair and tucks it between Nick’s fingers.

  
Later, Nick excuses himself from the girl, but Cassie is already gone. There’s just an empty booth with a small piece of paper on the table, a crude sketch of a woman and a man embracing. Her dark eyes, his full bottom lip, their arms and legs and hands.

  
Cassie stays gone for 8 months.

  
At first he’s worried, but when the sniffs can’t pick her up he relaxes a bit. The current Division sniffs are shit, really, and if his sources can’t find her then she’s certainly safe, or being shadowed which is fine too. For awhile he hangs around Spain, unsure of what to do with himself until Jacinta starts to really need his help, and hey, he made a promise a long time ago. He can’t keep chasing after Cassie.

  
5) When she finally cools down and she's finally ready, she finds a sniff. Nick’s in Hawaii, of all places, a place she loathes by definition, but she goes anyway.

  
She watches him as he stuff his face with plate lunch at a local place. He looks fine. Thin, but fine. Not in a sick way, in a he’s not taking care of himself way. Before, Cassie was the one to insist that they eat, make sure that Nick actually sleeps and doesn’t just stare at the ceiling, his thoughts screaming loud in the silence.

  
He passes her with his empty tray, and seems startled when she gives him a soft, “Hey.”

  
“Cassie.” He doesn’t sound surprised. Just sort of…dull. But she sees him stare at her, check her for wounds, look to see if she’s still the girl she’s always been.

  
“How’s it going?” She tries to sound pleasant. She spent a couple months in Christchurch working on her attitude. It almost took.

  
“Fine.” Nick sounds breathless. “I thought you hated the tropics.”

  
“I do, but if Mohammed doesn’t come to the mountain…”

  
Nick folds his arms. “I think, in this case, that Mohammed turned around and the mountain was gone without a word.”

  
He’s angry, which surprises her. He always reserved that emotion for other people.

  
“Look, do you want to go for a walk?” She doesn’t want to get into it here, and hey, they all have their script to play, and far be it for her to forget her lines.

  
Nick doesn’t speak for a moment, but finally nods. They head for the beach, picking around the homeless, the tourist trappers.

  
“I hate this town,” she says. “It’s like Van Nuys surrounded with water.”

  
“You’ve been here before?” Nick asks the question, and he sounds like a stranger. Someone she’s just meeting, rather than someone she used to share a toothbrush with.

  
“Yeah, twice.” Cassie kicks off her flip-flops, gives the still-warm sand a chance to exfoliate her feet. It’s late afternoon but the sun is still hot enough to cause a thin layer of sweat to break out over the bridge of her nose. “I really do hate it here. When the sniff said you were in Honolulu, I thought maybe you were still mad. Sticking to places you knew I hated.”

  
“Kinda opposite,” said Nick. “I wasn’t sure. You like to say things you don’t mean, you know?”

  
That, for some reason, makes her unbelievably sad. “Yeah, I know.”

  
There’s a million people on the beach, and neither of them are dressed for it. Nick’s wearing long shorts and a ratty shirt that she remembers well. She’s got on capris and tank top, at least, which gets totally sandy when they sit on a cement barrier just past the sidewalk.

  
“What have you been doing?” she asks.

  
Nick shrugs. “I don’t know. Whatever comes my way.”

  
She wants to laugh at that, but she knows that Nick hates being laughed _at_.

  
“You?” he says, and for some reason he’s having trouble looking at her.

  
Cassie thinks about those months apart. “I did a semester of school. A community college, which is shitty I know, but hey, I did it. I followed this band through part of the Midwest. I tended bar in New Zealand.” She shrugs. “I did kid stuff.”

  
“Kid stuff.” Nick repeats this tonelessly.

  
“Yeah. The stuff that you always wanted me to do, you know? Go to college, meet people. Mess up if I felt like it.”

  
“Huh. And you thought I wanted you to do all of that?” He’s pissed now. “Just leave without a word to me so you can sling booze in some dive?”

  
“You’re the one that thought _my_ life wasn’t good enough!”

  
“That’s not a life!”

  
“Yes it is! It’s what people my age do! I don’t know what you wanted from me – did you want me to act my age? Did you want me to go get married and knocked up?” She’s close to losing her temper here, so she’s shocked when the next words bring a tremble from her throat. “Did you want me to stay a kid? Watch you fuck every woman who hands you a flower, and be okay with it?”

  
“Cassie—No. I didn’t want that.” Nick looks incredibly guilty now, and she doesn’t feel glad about it. She never blamed him for that. For that part of it anyway. “Look, I don’t want you to feel you…have to be anything other than what you are. Honestly. I only ever wanted you to just be you.”

  
“It didn’t feel that way.” She’s wiping her cheeks now and hating herself for it.

  
“I know. I said it wrong, the way I always do.” She feels his hand ghosting over the back of her head. The humidity makes her hair curl tightly over her shoulders.

  
“I gave you the flower first, you know. I was the one that needed help. The rest were all just dumb coincidences.”

  
Nick just nods his head and looks at the ground. She can tell he probably wants to object to that one, but isn’t about to just yet.

  
“I needed you.”

  
“Cassie. I was always there.” Nick spreads his hands and finally looks at her, confused.

  
“I’m telling you that I _needed you_. I still need you, you know? You’re the only person I’ve ever trusted. You’re the only…person that I’ve cared about in years. And before you say anything, I want you to know that I saw this, years ago. I saw me telling you all of this, and you give me a hug and tell me that you love me but not that way and I _swear_ that if you do that to me now I’ll leave again because I know it isn’t true. I know how you and I end up. Did you know that?”

  
Nick doesn’t answer, won’t look at her.

  
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to watch you with another girl? To know what you’re doing with her when I know that you belong to me?”

  
Nick exhales slowly. “Cass…”

  
“I know you hate talking about it and maybe you don’t want it but I don’t think this future’s gonna change, no matter how hard you fight it.”

  
“Look.” Nick pulls her toward him, and his arms slips around her waist. It’s more touch than he’s given her in years. “I don’t want to fight it, okay? And I’m sorry I’m an idiot. I’m more sorry that I hurt you, though. You’re going to have to be really patient with me.”

  
Cassie lifts her hands to his shoulders, and Nick pulls her closer, her leg slipping between his, and a warm breeze blows her hair against his chest.

  
She smiles, a private smile just for her.

  
“I’ll try to be patient,” says Cassie, and pulls his head toward hers.


End file.
